Neo-trad style tattoo of an anchor and ship's wheel with postmarks, handwriting and a blue wash on the upper arm.

Anchor and ship's wheel with postmarks

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a detailed anchor with rope and a ship's wheel in the centre of the upper arm, surrounded by postmark stamps, faded handwritten script and the date 1.9.07. The anchor and wheel are drawn in dark outline with shading, while the postmarks and script are in thin lines. A loose blue watercolour wash sits behind the anchor and wheel, with a red stamp at the top left.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mathilde, the anchor came up off the bottom this morning with a whole bedstead of weed hanging from its flukes, and Captain Vogt swore at it as though it had been insulting his mother. We are tied up at the Baumwall and the stevedores are shouting in three languages, so forgive the scrawl. The wheel has been polished for the inspector and shines like a new penny, which he did not notice.

Keep reading

The stamp on this card will say Hamburg, but I wrote it on the steps of the Seemannsheim, so you may tell the postmaster he is wrong. I have counted the days on the back of the sheet: nineteen since we left the Elbe, eleven of them under a sky the colour of pewter. A gull followed us past Helgoland and sat on the rail for an hour, watching me as if I owed it money. I gave it the crust of my bread and felt foolish, and then felt better.

Do not believe what the papers say about the new line. They are sending us to Valparaíso in the same hull that split its seam at Cuxhaven last spring, and I have decided to be brave about it. If the next card arrives with a blue smudge on it, that is the sea's doing, not mine.

The date at the top is the first of September. Tomorrow we sail on the six o'clock tide, and I will stand at the wheel with my hands on the cold spokes and think of the orchard wall where you pressed a windfall plum into my palm. Yours, Jonas. P.S. The gull came back.

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